Rend the Dark Read Online Free PDF Page A

she took
a step closer and whispered. “Are you here about the dark one?” she said, an
edge of fear in her voice.
    The smile faded from his face. “What do you mean?” Ferran
asked, kneeling down.
    “The one with the darkness on him. It covers him.” She
gestured with her small hands, moving them over her heart.
    A mixture of thrill and dread crawled up his spine. “Can
you tell me more about what he looks like?”
    The girl seemed to think for a moment. “Maarjo was helping
my papa fix a roof one day and he fell and knocked over the barrel of pitch. It
got all over him. Black and sticky and you could barely tell it was him. He
looked like Maarjo did.” She frowned. “But the dark on him didn’t look sticky like
the pitch. It moved. It scared me.”
    In the back of Ferran’s mind, memories came unbidden.
Memories of himself as a child hiding in his bed in the orphanage as something
wearing the skin of a man and dripping a viscous living darkness walked among
the other sleeping orphans. “Where did you see him?” he asked, trying to keep
his voice soft and gentle.
    The girl gestured past the edge of the village and into the
fields and surrounding forests. “I used to go out with Papa when he would check
the fields. I used to like going out and seeing the workers. But when we were
coming back from the far fields, I saw him. I was frightened and told Papa but
he told me to hush and quit telling tales. Then I saw him again.”
    Her words came faster now, like a rain-flooded river
bursting over the edge of a dam. “I told again, but Papa got angry and told me
to stop with the lies.” She looked at Ferran and there was such a familiar,
haunted sadness in her eyes. “He couldn’t see it, you know? He didn’t see it
the way I did. That’s why he was angry and thought I was telling tales.” She
shook her head. “He didn’t know to be afraid.”
    “No, but you were afraid for him. And you kept him safe,
didn’t you?” Ferran said.
    The girl nodded.
    “You did good,” Ferran said, and the girl smiled. “What
about in the village? Have you ever seen anything like that here?”
    “No,” the girl said. “Grandfather made sure they would
never hurt us here.”
    From above the two of them, Warden Aker spoke. “Who is your
father, child?”
    “Hamond,” she said. “He is the headsman of the village.”
    Aker nodded. “Run along now and finish your chores. You
should head home to your father, girl.”
    The girl walked back across the way, headed for her
discarded bucket. She waved at Ferran, then the girl was gone, heading into the
center of the village.
    As he stared, Ferran saw the two magistrates and Mireia
approaching. It was Mireia’s expression that caught and held his attention.
There was a slight frown working at the corners of her mouth and creasing the
smooth perfection of her forehead. He knew what she was going to say before she
opened her mouth.
    “I sense nothing here,” she said as the group reunited.
“Nothing at all.”
    Ferran nodded. “I saw no sign here as well, but there was
something else. A child. She has the sight.”
    Mireia’s eyes widened. “Here in the village?”
    “The headsman’s daughter,” Warden Aker said in a low voice.
    Ferran stared at the forest, watching the wisps of mist
curl and trail around the trees at the edge. “She said she had seen a tainted
one outside the village, near the woods where those bandits emerged from.”
    “Then the hunt is not yet over,” Mireia said.
    Ferran nodded and started for the woods.

3
    His fingers
shook.
    Hil did his best to still them as they walked through the
darkened forest. The gray clouds had not lifted through the day, and now, at
the height of the afternoon, it was no brighter than morning. With the close
trees and their twisting branches overhead, even that small bit of light was
obscured, filtering down to the forest floor in shadowed streams that mingled
with the mist.
    Hil pressed his hand against his leg until